Long haul north

September 2009 was memorable for me for a few reasons, most notably because Amy underwent open heart surgery in Leeds General Infirmary. It was a traumatic time for our family but as always with her, she just gets on with it and once again proves what a fantastic little girl she is. We spent just over a week in Leeds and then spent a further week back in Hull before being discharged home. As well as this, I moved my shop into new premises, slightly less traumatic but still quite stressful!!!

The first day we arrived on the ward at Leeds, news broke of a Blackburnian Warbler on St Kilda. Fortuantely it proved to be untwitchable, but to be honest it could have been at Old Moor and I still wouldn't have gone. I've promised myself that one day I'll make it over to St Kilda, one of my favourite ever TV episodes was Monty Halls Hebridean Adventure when he made landfall on St Kilda, awesome place, scenery, birds, everything, oh and there's also this:

St Kilda Wren

News also broke of the Sandhill Crane on Orkney, this was one bird I knew there was no chance of getting to unless it stayed until Christmas!!! Then of course there was the Tufted Puffin in Kent, ridiculous bird in a ridiculous place, proving that anything can turn up anywhere at anytime. As always, when you can't go for a bird, you imagine that everyone else in the country is off seeing it, of course that's never the way. As it turned out the only bird that proved to be twitchable was the Crane on Orkney, only then if you were prepared to invest a bit of money and a bit of time travelling up for it.

When news broke of another Sandhill Crane flying over Dunbar at 8.15am on 16th September, plans were being formulated, but then after disappearing again, I thought it was another one that had got away. Then, while waiting for more news of the Long toed Stint in Sussex on 22nd, news broke that the Crane had been refound in Aberdeenshire at Loch of Strathbeg RSPB. The twitch was back on.

I should have tried to go the next day and been there at first light, but as always I dithered about a bit and finally decided to travel through the night on the Friday. With a few false alarms when it flew off south during the day, the twitch was nearly over before it had even started, but at 11.30pm I started the long haul north. Picking up Jonny and Ellen at Scotch Corner services on the A1, just before 1am, we had a chance to catch up on the last few years since we last twitched together, that was also to Aberdeenshire, for a Barrow's Goldeneye. It was constantly on my mind that we had to be there for first light, just in case it did a flit. So the foot was held down for a bit and after a brief encounter with the local police just into Scotland (just a routine check up!!) and 440 miles later we were pulling onto the reserve car park just after 6am and before it got light. We wandered into the visitor centre and joined the waiting crowd. Amazingly somebody picked it out in the near darkness, saying he could see the red on the forehead, therefore not one of the resident herons, it was a brave call but the correct one. The bird continued to show reasonably well from the visitor centre before flying to it's daytime feeding area in the stubble fields in the St .Combs area.

So we had connected well before 7am and we could finally relax a bit, oh yeah and drive all the way home. But with the pressure off, we took it a bit steadier on the way back south, stopping for the obligatory McDonald's celebration breakfast.

Of course, now that every man and his dog have had a chance to connect with it in Suffolk, it will be several years before it returns to it's true status of being a MEGA, I wonder what the next unblocked MEGA will be?

Old fall plantation anyone?

What's the twitch?

One for the oldies, any ideas?

Ok, a few clues:

- I was only 9 years old at this twitch
- the bird in question didn't survive the night

Still no idea!

- it was the second species of "Coccyzus" of the day

By the way, you won't see me in the photo as I had pushed my way through the crowd to get some decent views of the bird, leaving my Dad at the back

Answers on a postcard to :The junction of Porthloo Lane and Telegraph Rd, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly.

Looking back and looking forward to.... Autumn

I know Autumn and Spring are the key rarity finding seasons of the birding year, but Autumn really is the most exciting for me. Over recent years things have changed somewhat at home (and are set to change again very soon with our new arrival due in Nov ), so I know that I'm not going to be able to get to see everything. It's just that most days you get a MEGA alert come through on the pager, quite often more than one a day, and with the magical beeps comes the excitement of something amazing from the East or even better, something from the West, namely America. Although we tend to get more records of the commoner species like Swainsons and Grey Cheeked Thrushes, Blackpolls and Myrtle Warblers, there's always the chance of something really special, like another of these little beauties turning up...

Or it's about time I caught up with one of these and unblocked it from Dad so this would do for starters, preferrably on the east coast, on a weekday, no crowds and all that!!

Desperate times...

...call for desperate measures!!!

With the disappearance of last nights Spotted Crake at North Cave Wetlands, came news this morning of one of the commoner birds I need for Yorkshire. With a busy morning ahead swimming with Amy, we took a short drive out after lunch.

Parking at the far end of the lane, we walked straight towards Far Lake where this morning's report came from, but stopping on the way, I scanned through the scattering of ducks on Carp Lake and picked out the 3 Red crested Pochards (243) (2 eclipse drakes and a female).

You can just about make out the red bills on the 2 males - honestly!!

Amy checking for any other additions to her list!!!



A bird in the hand...

To cheer you up through the summer quiet period, click the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=EUEZkwJulBY

Marsh Sand at Blacktoft RSPB

Reading through posts on Bird Forum this morning before Amy's walk to school, I felt a change of plans to the day ahead was imminent. The Marsh Sand was at Alkborough Flats, Lincs, last night and it had been commented on that it could move north over the Humber/Trent to Blacktoft RSPB. Just as I got back from taking Amy to school, the pager went off, "Marsh Sand - Blacktoft RSPB at 9am".

After a quick trip to the other side of Hull for some work stuff, I made the short trip along to Blacktoft, arriving just after 11am. The bird was immediately on view at the back of the Ousefleet Lagoon, often in the same scope view as a Spotted Redshank and Dunlin, with several Bearded Tits feeding at the base of the reeds behind.

I hadn't seen a Marsh Sand since the flock of 3 at Cantley Beet Factory back in 1995 so glad I made the trip and it was another addition to the Yorkshire list. The end of year target of 275 seems a long way off with the summer ahead, just hoping for a decent autumn.

What a read!!!

A few weeks ago, we were awoken with a thud onto the door mat. I knew what it was before we even opened the packaging, "The Birds of Yorkshire - John Mather". I'd been searching online for a while for a copy and had had no luck, the local library only had a reference copy and therefore you weren't aloowed to take it home!! Then I found a copy of it on Amazon for £4!!! Alright, so it's not in mint condition but it's 25 years old, so the odd scuffed corner can be forgiven.

I've always enjoyed scanning through books like this and it's one that I'm sure I'll come back to time and time again. One of my most read bird reference books has to be "Rare Birds in Britain 1800-1990 - LGR Evans". This was then updated with "Rare Birds Where and When (Vol.1) - Russell Slack" in 2009, looking forward to Volume 2 when that's published.

There's some great old pictures in the book, Yellow Billed Cuckoo at Spurn in 1978, Song Sparrow at the obs in 1964 and of course this little beauty......

With a run of 12 records out of 20 nationally being in the county, during the nineteenth century and a further 3 during the 1900s, it got me thinking, when will we get our next record? Must be due, surely.